Parents Talk: Webgrader Woes

Now that school is over, I can post this and blow my good-parent cover.

My confession? I hate Webgrader, the nifty web-based application/interface the school district uses to supposedly keep parents and students informed about their assignments and grades.

But if teachers do not update Webgrader at least weekly, it’s useless. Otherwise, finding out about missing assignments or blown deadlines and, consequently, bad grades happens too late to be of any use. Try telling your son or daughter to find or do an assignment from two months ago and you may just get a blank stare. When you receive a missing work notification after school is over for the year, it’s very frustrating, to say the least.

Don’t misunderstand me: the kids are supposed to listen to their teachers and do their school work, regardless of what Webgrader shows.

But parents are supposed to monitor that they are doing their work and that they are getting a good education. It’s hard to evaluate that without adequate information along the way, something that Webgrader, prompted by the teachers, is supposed to provide.

Salt-in-the-wound is the clunky interface of Webgrader. It takes too many clicks to get the right report, right grading period and the right class.  You ’ve got different log-ins and meaningless passwords for each child, too.  I can only imagine how difficult and time-consuming it must be for teachers to enter grades from all those assignments for all their students.

More complaints: The email function of Webgrader is somewhat lacking, too, and isn’t any more helpful in contacting your child’s teacher than using the school district email contact list. The Webgrader emails are hard to read and you can’t forward any email to someone who isn’t on your child’s list of teachers or administrators, like the other parent, who should maybe look into the issue, too. And for some reason, teachers never seem to get the email. At least the system shows when the message is unread.

Because of Webgrader, I long for the days of blissful ignorance, when kids would come home at the end of the grading period with their report cards, hanging their heads in shame, or brandishing them triumphantly.

Do other parents feel the same? Webgrader, love it or hate it? How do you prefer to communicate with your child's teacher?